28 1. ( 0) . . . .-.' ..... .. -... . . '. . . . .' '-: .- " _ _ _ " . --Ý' . - . . ff 2. J ( \? - ) .. .'4 . 4 had once been the bottom of a lake. "Well," he said and he seized her arm. It felt a little stiff in his grasp. "Well, I ought to know the way from here on," he said. "Down to Main, and a couple of blocks farther on." On the lawn in front of one of the houses in the next block there was a baby in a play pen, and a couple of older children and a man were sitting close around it, watching. The baby was chewing on a rubber doll. Two girls came down the steps of the house just beyond and walked off up the sidewalk ahead of them. "The good people of Springfield," Bill said, and looked at Eleanor. She was looking straight ahead; she said nothing, and after a moment Bill looked away again. One of the girls was quite pretty) and the dresses of both, in the back, fitted snugly over their slim, youthful hips. A T the corner of Main Street, the two girls turned south. Bill paused a moment and then headed north. "Up here, I think," he said, and in spite of himself he began walking faster. "W e ought to be corning to it any time now -that is, if it's still there. It was a two- story house and it was painted yellow, and the expressman lived downstairs. We rented the top floor. And there was a firehouse just up the street from it, and the firemen used to sit out in the drive- way, just outside the big door, sunning themselves and smoking. It was a hook- and-ladder company, and once a week or so they would harness up the horses -they were drawn by horses in those days, of course-and they would drive the thing around the block for awhile, and when they came back they would wash it down in the driveway, and scrub it with sponges and polish it." He turned to her suddenly and grinned. "Am I boring you?" " N " h . d 0, s e sal . He studied her for a moment. "Look," he said. "If you're thinking about Winifred, I was only about fif- teen years old at the time, and she was maybe fourteen. There was nothing be- " tween us. "I suppose not," she said. "But," she held her breath a moment and then let it out. "Oh, well," and once more she took his arm. "Where's your house?" "I'm looking for it." The first street they crossed was called Jefferson, and then came Calhoun and then Hunting- ton. At Huntington there was a vacant lot on one corner al1d an apartment house on the opposite one, but he stopped for a moment, gazing around him. "This looks familiar, somehow," he said. Then he noticed, beyond the apart- ment house, the wide concrete drivew'ay and squat brick face of the firehouse. "This is it'" he cried suddenly. "And they've torn the place down, after all. It would be right there, where that apart- ment þouse is." He looked at the vacant lot again. It was grown up in scattered C, J. . _..... I " "- clumps of bunch grass, and there were bits of old paper and rubbish lying around. Three boys were standing idly near the sidewalk, at the far corner of the lot. "But that would be where Har- old Barker's house was, then," he said puzzledly. "There was always a house there. They wouldn't just tear a house down for no reason, would they?" "I don't know, darling," said Elea- " T F "" nor. axes. Ire. He nodded his head slowly. "Maybe it burned down," he said. Somehow the vacant lot troubled him more than any- thing else-more even than the pres- ence of the apartment house on the place where his own home had been- and without looking at Eleanor he walked over and began poking among the- grasses with his foot, trying to find some remains of the house or its founda- tions. After a very short time, Eleanor walked over beside him. "Where did Winifred live, by the way?" she asked "Winifred? She lived just up Main Street a ways. It was a kind of brown- painted shingle house, and I used to walk past it sometimes, evenings, making out that I had an errand or somethIng up that way. But I never spoke to her." He glanced at her briefly and grinned. "Gee, I must have been a shy kid in those days." · "It's a good thing you were," said Eleanor. ,cy ou might be married to her now, instead of me." "I don't think so," Bill said abstract-